Slashdot Mirror
The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites
nywanna writes "After seeing the example of Plenty of Fish and the reports of the site earning over $10,000/day in Adsense revenues, I quickly realized that there are a lot of ugly websites that are extremely successful. The reason for this, according to the article, is that ugly websites do a few things that beautiful websites tend to lack."
Maybe that's why slashdot is so successful?
The old ICQ website still tops my ugly list. It had multiple columns and went on forever. Info overload.
I'm sure that an ugly porn site would probably bring in more money than a pretty site about overpriced potato chips that you can ship from Pakistan.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Example #1: Slashdot itself.
Flipping through the various examples in The Zen of CSS Design , for example, I am amazed by how gorgeous some of the effects are, but I know that I'd be quickly worn out if I had to use any of these on a regular basis. Sometimes simple design, even to the point of blocky quasi-socialist-realist functionality, works better even if it doesn't win awards for looks.
ugly websites do a few things that beautiful websites tend to (not do).
Ugly women often have the same virtue.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/769705d9b08519a47 87a04a681da4700/index.html
I generally do not visit many nice looking sites because there is too much garbage on them and they are slow to load. Dont even get me going on sites with a big 800x600 flash movie on the home page...
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
Running the web dameon as root, now that's ugly.
Put the snob in the backseat for a moment and consider there's a difference between Ugly and Simple. Back in the early days there was a site where I learned the fundamental difference between Form and Function, the bottom line is, as it always has been, Keep It Simple, Stupid.
My designs tend to have a very small footprint and require minimal bandwidth. While I was building light weight search engines, the clod who over-saw our website put a massive graphic on the home page. Those, like myself, still on 2400 baud modems at the time had to sit and wait for that The Bob damn thing to load.
Years later I was working with United Airlines Air Cargo and some brain at the top elected to replace a very simple, not pretty, but very simple interface with javascripts galore, whizzy graphics and image mapping, all in a kind of Black on Black, which would have Hotblack Desiato break out in a sweat, dead or not. It didn't work and they'd spent big on it.
This isn't really an ugly site. On the other hand /. ... hmm.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One good example not mentioned: Maddox's The Best Page in the Universe prides itself on a very simple design and he gets a gillion hits. Not to mention he only uses a subdomain of his ISP.
Sorry for the site going down - working on increasing max connections...
When many people come to an ugly page they click somewhere just to get away from it.
Personally I hit the back button, but I guess that's just me.
Developers: We can use your help.
I am constantly suprised at the amount of traffic Craig gets with his horrific design. It's cluttered, the colors are lacking, and lacks any personality. It's just a big blob of links.
But then I remind myself that above all else, it's functional and has enough content to trump any bad design decisions. Content will always trump design. Even bad design.
-- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
Why do I have a feeling that this was all just an ad for plentyoffish.com? I mean, why not get a bunch of undersexed males to visit a page promising free matchmaking with plenty of pictures of cute women? The whole 'story' about ugly websites is really inconsequential. (And plentyoffish isn't all that ugly, IMHO.) I'm starting to get the feeling we've all fallen for this hook, line, and sinker.
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
http://www.amazon.com/
Butt ugly, horrible backends and still rolling in dough.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I've seen plenty of "pretty" websites that are absolutely worthless. This only goes to show that aesthetic appeal is NOT the most important factor in website development. Function -- comprising primarily of layout, usability, accessibility, platform, type, etc -- is the CORE of a good website design. Also, don't forget about content!
It is almost like a pyramid with content and functionality being the foundation for a good website. On top of the pyramid is the "polish" or aesthetic design. I'm sure that we'll all agree that aesthetics and human computer interactions (usability, flow, etc -- the stuff that Apple is notorious for) are also very important.... but, like anything else, it is a blend of form AND functionality. What good is a website if it ONLY works on Opera? What good is a great UI if there is not functionality? You get the point.
Now what would be quite interesting is to apply these concepts to people! As we all know, looks aren't everything! But hey, that certain polish certainly makes a difference.
Matthew K. Wong http://www.themindoffmatthew.com
Man, he doesn't come out and call Google ugly, but he implies it. He doesn't get it. It's really about the simplicity, rather than the aesthetics. Simple websites that provide people a real service *work*.
I remember working for a major shipping company and the marketers were just discovering the web. People used our website because they wanted to know where there packages were. *Now*. The marketroids were looking at ways to keep people glued to the site longer so they could sell them more services. We had to constantly battle to keep the tracking as simple as possible so that people could get on and get off quickly.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I mostly agree with the article, but I'd rephrase it. This is not about "ugly sells" but rather about "simple sells." Having flashy pages simply distracts from the message. But having nicely formatted text can be nice. eBay or Google may be "ugly," but more accurately they're simple (although I sort of disagree about eBay). Google doesn't load up its page with tons of junk, as does Yahoo... and that's probably why I use Google.
One thing I really disagree with is the articles talk about trust, how people feel they can trust an ugly website more than a nice one. Here, personally, I think that if somebody can't afford nice webdesign, they can't afford good web security. That being said, this is where my rephrase comes in again - simple and clean design leads me to trust a site more than does flashy sites.
To be fair, the article does talk about simplicity a lot... I just feel that it points to ugliness instead of simplicity as the driving factor, and that's not quite correct. Simple sites may be ugly, but they don't have to be - and if they're not, simple and clean is better than simple and ugly.
-Daniel
The one site in particular that sticks out in my mind has having particularly bad design is MySpace. Total information overload, poor organization of content, and horrible horrible backend code (servers are slow as molasses, and my sessions are frequently expired inexplicably).
I understand that it's a 'community' site, but I honestly don't feel a part of that at all. It's difficult to build a huge online community unless users can selectively segregate themselves into groups. This is part of the reason why Facebook and Flickr are both extremely successful.
Granted, there are ugly sites with truly great content that balances out the fact that the site's rather ugly. Likewise, there are a host of very pretty sites that are lacking in the content department.
Although I used to consider myself more of an content guy and the type of guy who uses the command line for most tasks, I find myself gravitating toward sites that although they may not offer as many features, are easier to use, and are visually appealing. Flickr is probably the best example of this. With CSS, there is no excuse to have a poorly designed site. CSS makes it ridiculously easy to propogate an attractive design across your entire site. If you already know basic HTML, you can pick up all the CSS you need to know in a few days. Likewise, CSS also means people can finally stop using Photoshop as a design tool.
With CSS, formerly ugly sites can make themselves pretty with very little effort. Slashdot went to great lengths with their stylesheet to make sure they preserved the old ugly layout.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I think there are some very good points here. I've always valued functionality over form and beauty. (I own ten year old cars, for example.)
But it's interesting to me that he defines success as making a lot of ad revenue. My websites do not exist to get me revenue. They exist to build communities. Somebody else might have yet another definition of success for his website. I think the general principles raised are true no matter what the purpose of your site is, but I find it interesting that some people don't see a point for their site other than "make a lot of money carrying Google ads." More power to them if they can ... it means they are providing something people want, financing it through advertizing, and making a bundle along the way. It's just not my purpose in having a website.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Its the content.
Slashdot ain't that pretty, honestly. But what draws people here is the content. PlentyOfFish is a dating service, that is free, and there are lots of people looking for love out there.
The quality of the website can't be judged by how good or bad it looks. Just like a book cover or people, beauty rarely is the sole reason something is ever successful or popular.
Some of the best looking websites out there don't get an audience because the content sucks or is irrelevant.
If you have a website that is making tonnes of money, why bother wasting any of it to glam it up?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
What's so ugly about that web page ? The colors are pleasing, the eye flows down the page, the content is easy to navigate. What did you want, a stupid Flash splash screen ?
My idea of an ugly web page is one with lots of dancing sausage, banner and other ads not only at the top but down the side, a web page where you just don't know what to look at, with an unpredictable mishmash of colors and unrelated content. I like a simple, fast loading web page better than some flash/javascript/rollover-magic animated slow-loading mess. Somehow I'm not shocked that a simple web page often does better than a complex one. The only people shocked to learn simple, organized groupings of information are more popular than some complex ones are graphic designers and such who are too impressed by their own tricks.
Form fitting function- that's beauty in design.
My personal website is all divs and styles, without any images. Any website that strays too far from this is, to me, ugly (and looking at some of the posts, I guess others are of the same opinion), especially if it's linking to ads.
I know people who are jumping on Bandwagon 2.0 and insisting that all websites should be AJAXified (ugh), and must have flashy graphics and rounded corners, and if you don't do that then your page is all boring and ugly.
There are also art people who spend all the time making their page look nice and don't actually put their content first. Their page might not be ugly, but it's not usable either.
Then there are the people who think HTML is ugly and go with Flash. Bastards.
The point of this long post is that a page may be 'ugly' to you but 'nice' to someone else. To all those people citing Google or Maddox as examples, 'simple' != 'ugly' - you may like it, and it may not be too flashy, but there are plenty of simple and ugly websites out there. (Green text on green background anyone?)
Not to mention, that the people who spend more time offering services and writing content than caring about the design might actually have more of a clue of what they are doing.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
It looked clean and functional. It certainly wasn't "pretty", but it was far from "ugly".
Form follows function. If there isn't any requirement for cute effects, then why add them?
I'd use an ugly site .. but only so I could get close to its beautiful sister site.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...was a breach of Google's AdSense contract?
PS I have an ugly site. Can I have a front page link too? Thanks!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The simple fact is, people don't care for fancy graphics. That's nice to look at, but it won't make you come back day after day. What people want is meaningful content, that's easily accessible. People want the semantic web, and RSS feeds from sites all over the net, in a simple browser, not animations that take ages to wade through, and must be waded through differently on each site. Plenty of Fish is a good example of that, but OK Cupid is a better one, and the popularity figures will show the difference.
And beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
A brownstone building is plain, but beautiful. Glueing an Italiante facade to it because those "architectural elements" have come into fasion does not make the building more beautiful, it makes it false and decadent, simply justifying Santayana's claim that "Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit."
Adding commercial "art" to a website to make it "beautiful" simply does the same; and I'll take Shaker furniture over baroque, thank you very much.
It has come to my attention that James Kunstler's blog (Clusterfuck Nation) has been attacked for looking "unprofessional," which rather took me aback, as I considered it one of the few truely professional looking sites left on the web. It's more than plain text, but it is simple and elegant. It gets the job done and does it in way that is graphically pleasing to the eye without being loaded up with fashionable crap. It looks professional. What it doesn't look like is commercial and pandering to whatever happens to be in vogue in commercial psuedo art on order to sell something.
YTMV, of course, but isn't that rather the point?
KFG
*Ahem* Case in point: Myspace. It is one of the most sluggish, kludgy, and ugly websites I have ever seen, but it is also one of the most successful.
So a feature is only a feature if it clutters up the front page?
I read the internet for the articles.
It works.The design is simple, fast (most of the time), and works in any browser.
Often, I hear people say OMG DIGG IS TEH PRETTIER: I'd rather have a site which is fast and easy to navigate than a site which is all eye candy and takes an hour to load.
just my 2 cents.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
I got the full article, and trust me, that was even worse. I had to switch off all colour and font sizes before it was bearable to read.
And then there's the content. Like when he accuses IMDB of having "not even bothered" to change the browser-default font.
In other news, nobody has yet bothered to hit me over the head with a pickaxe. I kinda appreciate that, just like I appreciate that imdb.com doesn't try to override the font that I have carefully selected and configured to be my browsers default.
Perhaps the reason why all these supposedly ugly websites are successful, is that the author has a messed up idea of "ugly".
ebay has got to be the posterchild for "first mover advantage." Not only is the site ugly, but the user interface is one of the worst I have ever seen in my life. Yet they are one of the most sucessful websites ever!!
There is a whole dot-com economy around making ebay easier to use. See ChannelAdvisor for example.
Think Deeply.
Well, it's only a feature if it's featured. HTH.
Can you figure out how to order something? How long did it take you? Keep trying. They really do sell online. Can you find the link? You'll find it quickly with Google (they have an ordinary Yahoo Store site), but can you find it on their main site? Don't give up. It will be worth it.
Or lack thereof, seems a major part of this. How many "pretty" websites use a retarded and slow loading flash "interface", in quotes because it's more of just a face which refuses to really interact. All this and the rise of the much touted AJAx, which has done nothing significant to improve my experiences on websites.
The majority of people in the US do not have broadband. Shit, I have broadband but share it with others in my house. Sometimes it doesn't run so fast; but craigslist almost always will load in a few seconds.
A blog about stuff.
nywanna is daoustmark. I am the same person...I submitted to both Slashdot and Digg. Hope that's not a problem.
"However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google's gross payments to You pursuant to the Program." (from the Terms and Conditions, point 9 "Confidentiality").
Seriously. I mean, it's last "overhaul" was going to CSS. And what did we get? The SAME shit again.
Sadly this is very true. Slashdot is pretty much 90's design, the usability is very poor...
Starting with the main page. OK, I log in. So now I see my username at the left with links to my preferences, journal, etc. Then, I look at the right and...my username again. Sorry guys, can you just keep all user-related info in the SAME place? (Hint: usability is also the reason why many people uses livejournal and blogger instead of slashdot journals to blog)
Then look at every commentary (ej, yours). Below your comment I see this link (with center alignment, I don't know why) " Re:Slashdot is successful too... by ericdano (Score:1) ". Where on earth is that link pointing to? OK, so everybody knows it's the parent, but where is the interface saying that to you?
And the answers to that commentary are just below. Can't people just add a "Answers to this commentary", or something?
And the centered "table" with information about the moderation. Do I really want to know the details of the moderation? Maybe if I've moderation points (I don't). What I don't understand is why that table is centered and far from the place where moderation is show (top of the commentary)
Oh, and now let's go with the search field. Did you know slashdot has a search field? It has, it's just in the LAST place where you'd want it to be, in the top BOTTOM of every page.
And the left "menu". There's SO MUCH unuseful crap there that it hurts.
Oh, and the icons at the upper top of the page which represent the topics of the recently posted stories. It's just me who thinks that icons mean NOTHING? Even if you know what the icon means (and I doubt the computer icon means something to somebody in a computer-related site), if you want to tell users what have been the latest stories posted why not put some text about the stories themselves? Icons don't tell me if I want to click them - there're mozilla stories I want to read and there're mozilla stories I do NOT want to read so I just never click those icons
Hell, I'm not even a usability expert, but it's clear that slashdot does NOT looks good. I know there's a page where you get the list of the stories recently posted by all users for example, but I have NO idea where to find it. Sometimes I find it but I quickly forget it because it's not obvious at all.
There's a reason why sites like digg are gaining users: Is not that they're better, they just don't make you suffer to use them. They use javascript (slashdot could keep generating non-ajax code depending on the browser or keep a "old browser" compatibility page somewhere), etc.
And if it takes two years to modify the slash code to make slashdot usable just like it took years to make slash to use CSS, it means the slash code is crap.
I wonder if they are still using the default mysql root password of '' too?
Mildly relevant comment related to bad naming: I drove by a new bar yesterday, called "Fox and Hounds English Pub and Grill". Who would want to go to a bar to meet women there? What horrible odds, one fox, lots of dogs!
Moving past the "The article is really ugly, it's just an error mesage" jokes, here's some issues with the article:
Getting pickier here... the header (blue on blue) is hard to read. Links are the wrong colour - as a user, brown-ish red means a link I've already been to, not a new link. It may look pretty, but it breaks user expectations.
Look at the "Rate This Article" at the bottom. It uses numbers as links. Great, I just love single character anchors.
The problem with web design is that too many companies hire people who came from advertising. The web is not an advertising medium - you can advertise as part of it, but fundamentally, if I'm reading your site, you have my attention already. Stop trying to get my attention, and focus on letting me get to the information I want as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'm am not here to drool over how many hours you spent deciding my web browser is 900 pixels wide, I am here to acquire information and move on to something more enjoyable.
Having said that, actually ugly web sites are bad. If your website looks like you just discovered the header 1-5 buttons in Dreamweaver, and would have used a blinking marquee if you knew how, I'm going to avoid it. Bright yellow 24pt text on a light blue background is going to give me a headache. Plain websites are fine (Slashdot), efficient websites are ideal (GMail), but pretty sites I have to wrestle to get anywhere on, or ugly sites that look like they were created by a colour blind five year old are bad.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Jacob Nielson's site,, is a good place to start. From his latest article:
He then lists "the biggest issues that led to lost business value in some of our recent consulting projects."
Also from Nielson's latest: "the biggest design flaws destroying business value typically involve Communicating clearly, Providing information users want, and Offering simple, consistent page design, clear navigation, and an information architecture that puts things where users expect to find them."
In short, as Nielson puts it: "Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today."
-mcgrew(.info for my ugly site:)
This guy seems to have a very odd perception of ugly. While I will grant that Plenty of Fish may not be the most attractive page ever, I would have to take issue with many of the other sites listed in the article. Craig's list is most certainly not ugly, and neither is Google (he doesn't outright call Google ugly, but he certainly implies it). And while I do see room for improvement on imdb, I see nothing wrong with their choice (or rather, lack thereof) of font. He seems to associate simplicity and functionality with ugliness, which is many times the opposite of the truth. Unfortunate, because he makes good points about functionality and targetting the right audience and then throws it all away when he calls sites that do these things "ugly".
To borrow a thought from a previous thread here, he probably thinks Microsoft's redesigned iPod package is prettier than the original as well.
After having read the actual article, I am left with the distasteful impression that this article is nothing more than a cleverly disguised ad for an ad supported dating website.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Oy, this will be an interesting girl search...
From the Best Page in the Universe, about halfway down:
..."
"2. Protest. I'm keeping my web site shitty as a protest against all the slick-looking, contentless web sites out there. Nobody cares about your stupid rotating icons and fading links. Mine isn't the only site on the internet that uses a simple layout, perhaps you've heard of this one?
_Picture of Google here_
Some webmasters have spent years tweaking their layout and designing their site, and very few get any traffic. This site, as shitty as it looks, gets over 1 million visits per month. I use large fonts also as a protest against all the stylish garbage you see out there. When I go to a web site, I WANT TO READ THE CONTENT. Trust me, that micro-font everyone uses isn't nearly as original as they think.
All Hail Maddox!
These are the same people who say that text consoles are ugly and GUIs are cool...
Some programs just plain don't need a GUI.
Some websites just plain don't need to be fancy.
As a bunch of people have already said, simple != ugly... now, in some cases, it wouldn't hurt the site to add some graphics to it, or maybe make the design a little more complex; if you do it right you can probably make it look nicer *and* retain all of the ease of use. But, again, mere simplicity is not the same thing as ugliness.
And personally, I far far prefer a well designed but simple layout to an overly complex layout. Like for instance, about 95% of the 'news' websites out there - that whole thing about cramming the article into the center 30% of the screen and then putting advertisements, links to the 'most popular' news stories, and whatever else all around it (or even worse, *in* the middle of the article), splitting the article into 150 3-sentence pages so that you have to keep clicking on 'next page' all the time, etc.. that's just plain not useful.
(And yes, I know that a lot of that, especially putting the ads in the middle of the article, is on purpose; but that doesn't change the fact that it's incredibly annoying)
Designs should enhance the site, not get in the way of the site. You can make a very pleasing design without making it override the function; in other words, you don't have to think of it as 'function over form' but rather as 'function *and* form'.
And of course, the whole subject of ads at all is a big one.. I haven't seen very many sites that have advertisements on them (except where the ad was designed specifically to go on the website in question, rather than being a generic google ad or something like that) that actually made the ad *fit* with the rest of the site. Almost invariably, the ads made the site uglier.
Early bird may get the worm.. but the second mouse gets the cheese.